South Carolina valedictorian reacts to speech heard round the world

Roy Costner's speech-turned-prayer goes viral

Published 10:50 AM PDT Jun 10, 2013

PICKENS COUNTY, S.C. -

An Upstate valedictorian who caught the attention of WYFF 4 when he threw out his graduation speech for an impromptu delivery of the Lord's Prayer is shocked by the worldwide attention being paid to the choice he made.

Liberty High School valedictorian Roy Costner IV delivered his speech representing a county that has been under pressure from the ACLU and the Freedom From Religion Foundation to keep prayer out of schools and meetings.

He tore up the approved speech, and after speaking for a few minutes, he thanked his parents for leading him to the Lord at a young age, and then he said, "I think most of you will understand when I say, 'Our Father, who art in heaven…" as he began to recite the Lord's Prayer.

Much of the crowd broke into tentative applause that then grew into cheers that nearly drown out Costner's voice as he continued the prayer. (Full Story)

Costner said he was shocked when News 4 called him Monday. But as soon as his story and the video from YouTube was covered by WYFF, the story went viral.

He said since then he has had to turn his phone off because it's been ringing non-stop.

The story has appeared on dozens of websites, many that broke copyright laws to take the story, and others that wrote their own version. Among the larger websites that covered the story were The Daily Mail in London, the Washington Times, Huffington Post, Today.com, msn.com, Yahoo!News, Fox News and The Blaze.

Various versions of the YouTube video got a total of more than 295,000 views, and WYFF's video version of the story on AOL got another 36,000 views.

The first post of the story on WYFF's Facebook page got more than 30,000 views, more than 1,400 likes and 268 shares.

"I am just blown away," Costner said. "I don't even know how to describe it. I was hoping just one local station would pick it up just so our community would watch. And I am going to New York and I am blown away. I'm humbled and honored to get to go and I am just astonished at the reaction of America at this point."

Costner was catching a flight to New York City on Thursday afternoon. He will be on CNN and Fox News on Friday.

Costner is still shocked by the attention.

"From a town of 3,000 with three red lights," he said. "That's pretty big."

But in spite of all the attention, it says his top priority is still making it clear where his strength comes from, and that God is the biggest thing in his life.

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